Anatomy of Democratic Unmaking: An Open Letter on India’s Transparency, Human Rights, and Accountability Crises

Posted on 9th December, 2025 (GMT 07:58 hrs)

ABSTRACT

Submitted by activists, whistleblowers, and citizens associated with Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA), this appeal documents a systematic regression in transparency, accountability, civic space, and human-rights protections in India from 2014 to 2025 under successive BJP-led governments. Key manifestations include: declining global rankings on corruption (CPI 96/180 in 2024), press freedom (151/180 in 2025), and rule-of-law indices; erosion of the RTI Act through 2019 amendments, administrative obstruction, and violence against hundreds of RTI activists; the impending GANHRI downgrade of the NHRC from “A” to “B” due to executive capture and neglect of systemic violations, exemplified by its handling of the opaque DHFL insolvency harming lakhs of small depositors; electoral-finance opacity via Electoral Bonds and post-2024 anonymous channels; credible allegations of large-scale voter deletions and manipulations (2024–2025); shrinking civic space through UAPA, sedition, PMLA, FCRA, and SLAPP suits; pervasive surveillance (Pegasus, Aadhaar profiling, Sanchar Saathi) with weak data-protection safeguards; and deepening crony-capitalist capture of media, regulators, and public assets. Petitioners urge OHCHR, Amnesty International, HRW, Transparency International, and allied bodies to monitor, investigate, report, provide technical support, protect defenders, and press for urgent reforms to halt India’s slide toward electoral autocracy and restore constitutional guarantees of transparency, accountability, and human rights, with a particular focus on the DHFL scam as a case of financial abuse.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I – SYSTEMIC EROSION OF INDIA’S CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ECONOMY

1. Transparency & Corruption Trends

1.1 Measured Decline in Global Transparency & Corruption Indices

2. Judicial Independence and Democratic Backsliding

2.1 Executive Interference in Appointments
2.2 Rise of Sealed Cover Jurisprudence
2.3 Punitive, Selective, or Delayed Case Listings
2.4 Executive–Judiciary Ideological Convergence
2.5 Recognition by Global Rule-of-Law Observers
2.6 Interlinkages With Broader Transparency Erosion

3. Electoral Opacity and “Vote Dacoities”

3.1 Electoral Finance: From Anonymous Bonds to New Opacity Pathways
3.1.1 Voter-Roll Integrity: Patterns and Recent Controversies
3.1.2 Convergence: Funding Opacity, Surveillance & Roll Manipulation
3.1.3 Political and Human Rights Stakes
3.1.4 Elements of Genuine Electoral Reform
Evidence Summary

4. Shrinking Civic Space & Criminalization of Dissent

4.1 Criminalization of Speech, Assembly, Advocacy

4.1.1. SLAPP Suits as Instruments of Intimidation

4.2 Suppression of Mass Movements: CAA, Farmers’ Protests

5. Surveillance, Digital Governance & the Aadhaar-State

5.1 Expansion of Unaccountable Surveillance Infrastructure
 5.1.1 Pegasus and the Normalisation of Espionage
 5.1.2 COVID-Era Data Exposures
 5.1.3 Sanchar Saathi & Telecommunications Panopticism
5.2 Data Protection in Name, Surveillance in Practice
 5.2.1 DPDP Act 2023–25: A Privacy Law That Legalises Surveillance
 5.2.2 Data as a Governance Weapon
5.3 Algorithmic Governance: Aadhaar, Automation & Profiling
 5.3.1 Aadhaar’s Evolution into a Disciplinary Apparatus
 5.3.2 Predictive Policing, FRT, Automated Extraction
5.4 Press Freedom in Retreat
 5.4.1 Criminalization of Journalism
 5.4.2 Media Capture and Consolidation
 5.4.3 Surveillance as Weapon Against Journalists
5.5 Systemic Implications: A Democracy That Watches Its Citizens

6. Corporate Capture & the Crony-Economic Order

6.1 Market Concentration & Narrative Control
6.2 Political Finance as Corporate–State Exchange
6.3 Sectoral Favouritism
 6.3.1 Natural Resources & Mining
 6.3.2 Ports, Airports & Logistics
 6.3.3 Telecom & Digital Infrastructure
 6.3.4 Defence & Strategic Infrastructure
 6.3.5 Piramal’s Cronyism: Patronage & Power
6.4 Regulatory Deference & Erosion of Competitive Neutrality
6.5 Cronyism as Threat to Democratic & Economic Integrity

7. International Treaty Obligations & Global Standing

7.1 ICCPR: Curtailment of Freedoms & Due Process
7.2 UNCAC: Political Finance Opacity & Capture
7.3 UNGPs: Weak Corporate Accountability
7.4 Retreat from Open Government Partnership Norms
7.5 Why This Matters

8. Constitutional Linkages & Democratic Stakes

9. Economic & Social Impacts on Vulnerable Populations

9.1 Human Development & Social Well-Being
9.2 Hunger, Nutrition & Basic Rights
9.3 Inequality & Labour Precariatisation
9.4 Environmental & Indigenous Rights Violations
9.5 Islamophobia as Political Economy Strategy
9.6 Why These Indices Matter

CHAPTER II – NHRC: A PUBLIC INSTITUTION IN CRISIS

1. Concerns and Reflections

2. Paris Principles Compliance: A Concise Assessment

2.1 NHRC vs Paris Principles: Structural Non-Compliance
2.1.1 What the Table Reveals: Systemic Decline
2.2 Implications of an NHRC Downgrade
2.3 Relevance for This Open Letter

3. Case Study — The DHFL Debacle (2019–2025)

NHRC’s Persistent Inaction Amid Mass Financial Harm

CHAPTER III – RTI UNDER THREAT

1. Systemic Erosion of the Right to Information

1.1 Legal Dilution
1.2 Administrative Obstruction
1.3 Violence and Intimidation
1.4 Institutional Non-Disclosure

2. Case Study — DHFL Resolution Process as Microcosm of Transparency Collapse

2.1 RTIs as Forensic Evidence of Obstruction
2.2 Representative RTI Trail (2024–2025)
2.3 The Regulatory Grey Zone: Designed Ambiguity
2.4 The Death of RTI as a Democratic Remedy
2.5 Judicial Landscape: Doctrinal Shield from Accountability
2.6 DHFL and India’s Democratic Unmaking: A Holistic Analysis
2.7 Why This Case Matters

CHAPTER IV – OUR DEMANDS

1. Introduction

2. Detailed Recommendations

2.1 NHRC Reforms (Priority Actions)

2.1.2 RTI Strengthening

2.2 Regulatory Transparency & Insolvency Governance

2.1.3.1 Public Disclosure of CoC Decisions
2.1.3.2 External Audits & Judicial Oversight
2.1.3.3 RBI–IBBI Consistency & Conflict-of-Interest Disclosures
2.1.3.4 Recognition of Financial Abuse & DHFL Victim Protection
2.1.3.5 Victim-Centric Remedies
2.1.3.6 International Monitoring & Technical Support

2.3 Electoral & Media Safeguards

2.4 International Monitoring & Technical Support

2.5 Final Appeal

CONCLUSION

APPENDICES

Appendix I – Selected Investigative Pieces

Appendix II – Brief Timeline

References

To:

• Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
• Transparency International
• Amnesty International
• Human Rights Watch
• Open Society Foundations
• Freedom House
• The Open Government Partnership (OGP)
• The Fund for Constitutional Government
• Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
• Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI)

Subject:

Urgent Appeal: Monitor and report on India’s deepening crises in transparency, democratic accountability, civic space, and regulatory and/or constitutional integrity (2014–2025), with priority on NHRC, RTI Act, electoral and media transparency, surveillance concerns, and systemic financial abuse of ordinary citizens as instantiated in the DHFL (an once AAA-rated NBFC) insolvency.

INTRODUCTION

We, a collective of whistleblowers, human-rights defenders, RTI activists, journalists, academics, former public servants, and concerned citizens writing on behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA), address you with profound urgency and a deep respect for your respective mandates.

Over the past eleven years (2014–2025), successive governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party have presided over an accelerating, multi-dimensional, and mutually reinforcing regression in India’s transparency, accountability, civic-space, and human-rights architecture. What began as incremental administrative and legislative changes has, by 2025, hardened into a systemic pattern of institutional capture, legal weaponisation, digital surveillance, corporate-state fusion, and the progressive hollowing-out of constitutional checks and balances.

This is not a mere domestic political contestation; it is a deliberate project of democratic unmaking that now threatens the core principles enshrined in the Indian Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Paris Principles on National Human Rights Institutions, and the global transparency and open-governance standards your organisations have long championed.

The evidence of this regression is no longer anecdotal or contested. It is documented across independent global indices and peer-reviewed assessments:

• India’s ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index has slid to 96/180 (2024);
• Press freedom has fallen to 151/180 (RSF 2025);
• Freedom House downgraded India to “Partly Free” (2023) and V-Dem now classifies the country as an “electoral autocracy”;
• GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation has formally recommended downgrading India’s National Human Rights Commission from “A” to “B” status (decision upheld 2025);
• Over 100 RTI activists have been killed since 2014, while the RTI regime itself has been systematically undermined through legislative amendment, administrative obstruction, and institutional vacancy;
• Electoral finance has been deliberately anonymised and, after the Supreme Court struck down the Electoral Bonds scheme in 2024, simply rerouted through less auditable channels;
• Mass deletions and opaque manipulations of voter rolls have been credibly documented in multiple states during 2024–2025;
• An unprecedented surveillance architecture (Pegasus, Aadhaar-enabled profiling, Sanchar Saathi, facial-recognition policing) operates with virtually no statutory or judicial oversight;
• Civic space has shrunk through the systematic misuse of UAPA, PMLA, FCRA, sedition-era provisions, and SLAPP litigation;
• Media plurality has been replaced by oligarchic capture;
• Regulatory institutions increasingly function as enablers rather than checks on a small circle of politically aligned conglomerates.

These developments are not isolated policy failures; they form an interlocking ecosystem in which weakened oversight emboldens opacity, opacity enables impunity, and impunity further narrows the space for dissent and redress. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle that is rapidly transforming Asia’s largest democracy into a hybrid regime characterised by electoral formality without democratic substance.

We write to you because your organizations possess the moral authority, technical expertise, and international leverage required to:

(a) rigorously document and publicly report on these interconnected regressions,
(b) provide protective accompaniment and technical support to India’s besieged human-rights defenders, whistleblowers, journalists, and transparency activists,
(c) press the Government of India, through all available multilateral and bilateral channels, to reverse course and restore constitutional and international-law compliance,
(d) mobilize coordinated global civil-society and institutional pressure to prevent the complete collapse of democratic safeguards in a nation of 1.4 billion people.

CHAPTER I

THE BACKDROP:

SYSTEMIC EROSION OF THE FOUNDATIONAL PILLARS OF INDIA’S CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ECONOMY

India’s political economy over the past decade exhibits a systemic unraveling across what can be conceptualized as the “four+one” pillars—with the “+1” representing social media and cyberspace as a critical dimension of influence and control—that once underpinned governance, accountability, and democratic legitimacy. These pillars include institutional oversight, transparency mechanisms, civic space, regulatory independence, and the informal nexus of corporate–state power. Once mutually reinforcing, each has now been weakened: oversight bodies are captured or rendered ineffectual; transparency regimes are hollowed out; civic space is curtailed through legal, administrative, and digital repression; regulatory institutions increasingly act as enablers rather than arbiters; and corporate–state entanglements constitute an invisible yet decisive fifth pillar, concentrating economic and political authority in the hands of a few. This is not a series of isolated policy failures, but a coordinated structural erosion that undermines equitable development, accountable governance, and democratic resilience, producing a political economy oriented toward extraction, consolidation, and crony-monopoly privilege rather than inclusion, rights, or citizen resilience.

1. Measured Decline: Transparency and Corruption Indicators

India’s recent performance across global transparency and corruption metrics reveals a pattern of stagnation, regression, and institutional weakening, marking a decisive shift from earlier claims of governance reform. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) shows that while India’s CPI score has remained stalled at 38/100, its global ranking has slipped—from 85/175 in 2014 to 96/180 in 2024. This relative decline, even amid a static score, highlights a deeper concern: India has failed to keep pace with global improvements, signaling rising perceptions of corruption, regulatory capture, and the fraying of institutional checks and balances.

These numbers echo broader governance trends. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators report a continued fall in India’s “control of corruption” percentile—from roughly 47 in 2014 to under 40 by 2024—reflecting persistent opacity, politicized allocation of resources, and diminished oversight. Meanwhile, press freedom, an essential pillar of transparency and public accountability, has deteriorated sharply. India’s rank in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index plunged from 140 (2014) to 151 (2025), driven by growing censorship, intimidation, and violence against journalists—particularly those scrutinizing state or corporate power.

These indicators are neither isolated nor incidental. They point to the consolidation of an opaque governance architecture in which executive dominance, weakened safeguards, and shrinking civic space interact to entrench unaccountable power. As the costs of seeking public information rise—through bureaucratic stonewalling, punitive legal threats, or outright hostility—marginalized communities (Muslims, Dalits, women and adivasis in particular), who depend most on transparent delivery of social and environmental services, bear the greatest burden. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: opacity breeds corruption; corruption erodes trust; weakened institutions further normalize secrecy—accelerating a democratic and developmental backslide with profound social consequences.

2. Judicial Independence and Democratic Backsliding

India’s justice system—historically a cornerstone of democratic checks and balances—is now marked by persistent executive interference and deepening institutional opacity, eroding the once-clear demarcation between the judiciary and the political executive. The cumulative effect is a judiciary increasingly unable or unwilling to act as an effective counter-majoritarian safeguard.

2.1. Executive Interference in Appointments

Government delays and selective approvals of Collegium-recommended judges have become systemic rather than exceptional. By mid-2025, the Supreme Court itself flagged prolonged executive inaction, with over 100 High Court vacancies remaining unfilled due to withheld or stalled recommendations. Such obstructionism not only impairs judicial efficiency but also compromises the independence of courts by enabling indirect control over their composition.

2.2. Rise of Sealed Cover Jurisprudence and Closed Hearings

The expanding use of sealed covers in matters of public importance—national security, electoral processes, surveillance—has sharply curtailed the principle of open justice. This opaque practice, criticized even by former judges, allows the executive to present evidence shielded from public or adversarial scrutiny. Closed-door hearings in politically sensitive cases further hollow out transparency and weaken public trust in judicial neutrality.

2.3. Punitive, Selective, or Delayed Listings

Case-listing practices increasingly appear arbitrary or politically calibrated. Delays in hearing petitions on electoral bonds, Pegasus surveillance, and major human-rights violations have undermined the judiciary’s capacity to deliver timely justice. The effect is twofold: critical constitutional questions remain unresolved for years, while executive actions continue unchecked.

2.4. Executive–Judiciary Ideological Convergence and the Erosion of Institutional Neutrality

A disturbing pattern of ideological and political proximity between sections of the higher judiciary and the ruling establishment has accelerated the crisis of judicial independence. Former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi’s swift nomination to the Rajya Sabha after presiding over politically sensitive cases—including the contested Ayodhya verdict (highly communal issue)—shattered long-held norms of post-retirement neutrality and was publicly condemned by former judges like Justice Kurian Joseph for compromising the court’s credibility. During his tenure, critics had already raised concerns about deference to the executive in matters such as the handling of the sexual-harassment allegations against himself, the Assam NRC process, and selective prioritization of key constitutional cases.

More recently, under Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, the optics of Prime Minister Modi’s attendance at a private Ganesh Puja inside the CJI’s residence—an event criticised by senior lawyers including Indira Jaising and by judicial-accountability groups—has deepened anxieties about ideological alignment with the ruling party. Though defended as a routine courtesy visit, the symbolism of a sitting CJI hosting the head of government in an overtly religious setting with active media presence has profound implications in an era marked by theocratic, majoritarian consolidation. When coupled with selective case listings, delayed hearings on matters implicating executive power, and public gestures that echo the dominant political narrative, these incidents collectively signal a judiciary drifting toward an executive-validated moral order. The cumulative effect is a dangerous form of convergence: judicial authority increasingly legitimizes executive overreach, while executive patronage and ideological affinity shape judicial behaviour. This loop not only undermines constitutional separation of powers but also normalizes a theocratic and regime-aligned adjudicatory culture, eroding public faith in the courts as neutral guardians of democracy.

For detailed analysis with concrete examples, view the following:

2.5. A Pattern Recognized by Global Rule-of-Law Observers

These developments are consistent with global assessments of democratic erosion:

• Freedom House (2023) downgraded India to “partly free”, citing explicit concerns about executive pressure on the judiciary.
• V-Dem records a 20% decline in judicial autonomy indicators (2014–2024) and otherwise classifies India as an “electoral autocracy” as a whole. We will be discussing the electoral aspect distinctly in a consecutive section of this letter.
• CIVICUS and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers have repeatedly flagged weakening structural safeguards.

For more context, view the following:

2.6. Interlinkages With Broader Transparency Erosion

A judiciary compromised by executive influence is less capable of:

• enforcing RTI mandates
• scrutinizing regulatory opacity
• safeguarding fundamental rights
• providing timely redress to citizens

This institutional weakening enables unchecked executive dominance, feeding a cycle in which opacity, impunity, and democratic backsliding reinforce one another.

3. Electoral Opacity and “Vote Dacoities” (Fraud and Manipulation)

India’s democratic legitimacy depends on two basic public truths: (1) who pays for politics, and (2) who is entitled to vote. Between 2018 and 2025 both truths have been systemically eroded — first by engineered anonymity in political finance and, second, by opaque, contested manipulations of electoral rolls to favour the so-called “ruling party”, i.e., the BJP. Together, these trends create a poisoned electoral system in which money, state power, and digital tools can be used to buy influence and suppress voters.

3.1. Electoral Funding: From Anonymous Bonds to New Routes of Opacity

The electoral-bonds regime (2018–2024) institutionalized anonymous corporate donations, converting public disclosure into executive control. In February 2024 the Supreme Court struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme as unconstitutional, highlighting that donor anonymity violated voters’ right to information and accountability.

The scale of the scheme is important: State Bank of India responses and RTI analyses show roughly ₹16,000–₹16,518 crore of electoral bonds were sold between 2018 and early 2024, with a highly skewed distribution that favoured parties in power, i.e., the BJP. The bulk of this funding flowed to incumbent interests, creating structural incentives for quid-pro-quo linkages between donors and state action.

The court’s annulment did not eliminate opacity. Instead, evidence shows donors and intermediaries have shifted to alternative opaque channels—notably electoral trusts and bespoke vehicles—that preserve anonymity and weaken audit trails. Post-ban disclosures and market monitoring indicate a surge in electoral trust activity and new creative routing of funds, raising immediate concerns about regulatory capture and the ability of disclosure regimes to keep pace with evasive practices.

Why this matters: anonymous or weakly audited finance (a) concentrates political influence with corporate donors, (b) erodes competitive parity, and (c) creates fertile terrain for linkages between donations and favourable contracts, licenses, or regulatory forbearance—particularly where procurement and clearances are concentrated within a small set of corporate groups.

3.1.1. Voter-Roll Integrity: Patterns, Mechanisms, and Recent Controversies

The problem. Electoral roll manipulations—mass deletions, suspicious additions, and poor auditability—have surged in the 2024–2025 period in several states, producing contested voter lists and credible allegations of “vote theft” or “vote dacoity.” Official revision exercises such as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have produced large, hard-to-explain changes in headcounts that civil-society monitors, political opponents, and some courts have flagged for inquiry.

Case numbers and geographic hotspots. High-visibility controversies emerged in states including Bihar, Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka. For example, the roll exercises in Bihar’s 2024–2025 revisions produced millions of unmatched or excluded records—independent analyses reported net reductions in the roll in the millions (several million names) and prompted petitions and judicial scrutiny. Similar, localized spikes in additions and suspicious clusters of registrations in parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka triggered political and media alarms.

Mechanisms of manipulation. These controversies expose common modalities.

• SIR / mass digitization errors: large-scale digitisation or “clean-up” operations can create mapping errors that are later used to justify deletions without proper hearings.
• Engineered transfers and additions: irregular, cluster-based voter additions in specific booths (sometimes coinciding with sudden surges in worker or construction registration lists) can inflate favorable margins.
• Administrative opacity & inadequate audit trails: draft rolls and final rolls are not always accompanied by accessible, verifiable change-logs, leaving little recourse for those excluded.
• Paid manipulation: civil-society investigations and local inquiries have also surfaced examples where paid actors or intermediaries have been used to add or remove names for financial gain.

Institutional responses. The Election Commission’s formal posture has often been defensive: stressing procedural compliance or insisting that draft roll changes are part of legitimate revision processes while courts and civil society press for granular disclosures, booth-level audits, and individual affidavits to substantiate claims of wrongful exclusion. In multiple instances the Supreme Court and high courts have asked for supplemental data or probe findings, underscoring that systemic judicial answers remain partial and contingent.

For more details, view the following investigative articles:

3.1.2. Convergence: How Funding Opacity, Surveillance Tools, and Roll Manipulation Reinforce Each Other

These are not separate problems. Their interaction creates a system of democratic capture:

• Opaque funding buys influence and shifts incentives within state agencies and local power-brokers. Large donors gain both direct access and informal leverage over bureaucratic processes that control registrations, land records, licenses, and procurement.
• Digital surveillance and profiling make targeted operations feasible—identifying communities to be re-registered, excluded, or pressured.
• Manipulated rolls translate those investments and capabilities into electoral advantage by reducing opposition voters’ representation or artificially swelling pro-incumbent booths.

Together, these dynamics transform vulnerabilities in governance into predictable strategies of political engineering: money + data + bureaucratic discretion = manipulated outcomes.

3.1.3. Political and Human Rights Stakes

• Disproportionate impact on minorities and the poor. Deletions and exclusions disproportionately affect mobile, marginalized (including religious minorities), or economically insecure groups—precisely those least able to navigate complex administrative objections and hearings.
• Erosion of legitimacy. Large unexplained swings in roll figures and concentrated financing of incumbents undermine public confidence in democratic outcomes and fuel political polarisation.
• Rule-of-law consequences. Weak audit trails and narrow judicial remedies (see related sections on judicial deference) make restitution difficult and slow, often arriving too late to affect electoral outcomes.

3.1.4. What Reform Would Need to Include

Full Retrospective & Ongoing Donor Transparency
Immediately release all remaining State Bank of India (SBI) and Election Commission of India (ECI) Electoral Bonds data in complete, machine-readable (CSV/JSON), searchable format — including donor names, unique bond numbers, denominations, dates of purchase/encashment, beneficiary parties, and any routing identifiers. Mandate a Supreme Court-supervised forensic audit (within 6 months) to trace post-2024 flows through electoral trusts, subsidiaries, shell entities, and layered transactions. Require annual public updates of this dataset in perpetuity.

Real-Time, Cryptographically Verifiable Voter-Roll Change Logs
Amend the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 to make it mandatory that every addition, deletion, or modification in electoral rolls (including during Special Intensive Revision) generates an immutable, timestamped, booth-level public “diff” with:

• Voter EPIC number (hashed for privacy if required)
• Reason code (deceased, shifted, duplicate, etc.)
• Identity & digital signature of the Electoral Registration Officer / Booth Level Officer
• Cryptographic hash chain (preferably blockchain-based) for tamper-evidence
  All draft, intermediate, and final rolls must remain permanently archived and publicly downloadable for diff comparison.

Statutory Independent Audit & Rapid-Remedy Panels
Constitute state-level Civic-Technical Audit Panels (co-chaired by retired judges, ADR/civil society nominees, and independent IT experts) with binding powers to:

• Investigate deletion/addition clusters, algorithmic anomalies, and booth-level irregularities within 7 days
• Order immediate provisional restoration of deleted voters
• Direct criminal investigation under IPC Sections 171E/F and IT Act where tampering is prima facie established
  Panels must deliver enforceable orders within 15 days; non-compliance by ECI officials to invite contempt proceedings.

Ending Trust & Intermediary Opacity – Quarterly End-to-End Disclosure
Amend Section 29C of the Representation of the People Act and the Income Tax Act to impose:

• Quarterly (not annual) disclosure by electoral trusts and all political funding entities above ₹1 crore
• Full beneficial ownership trail (using MCA-21 and PAN linkage)
• Exact rupee-wise allocation to each political party
• Publication on ECI website within 30 days of quarter-end
  PMLA-level penalties (₹1 crore + 3× undisclosed amount) and automatic disqualification of recipient candidates/parties for deliberate concealment.

Iron-Clad Protections for Vulnerable Voters
Enact statutory safeguards against disproportionate disenfranchisement of minorities, migrant workers, women, and low-income groups:

• Mandatory SMS/WhatsApp + postal notification to every deleted voter within 72 hours, with clear appeal instructions and QR code to Form 7 status
• Deployment of mobile voter correction vans and helpdesks during every SIR/SSR drive
• Integration of Aadhaar + Voter Portal for instant online restoration
• Free legal aid and dedicated fast-track benches (decision within 10 days) in every district for voter-roll challenges
• Automatic provisional inclusion in the roll pending final decision if the election notification is issued.

These five measures, if legislated or enforced through Supreme Court directives in 2024, would close the major transparency and integrity loopholes exposed since the Electoral Bonds judgment and the controversial 2024–2025 voter-roll revisions.

Evidence Summary

Electoral Bonds scheme struck down by the Supreme Court in Feb 2024 as violating the right to information. About ₹16,000–₹16,518 crore in bonds were sold up to early 2024; a large share accrued to incumbents. After the ban, electoral trusts and other channels surged, creating new opacity pathways. Mass deletions and anomalous roll changes in Bihar (millions of names) and contested surges in Maharashtra and Karnataka generated credible public and legal challenges in 2024–2025.

4. Shrinking Civic Space and Criminalization of Dissent

India’s civic space has undergone an unprecedented contraction in the last decade, marked by an escalation of punitive laws, discretionary policing, financial surveillance, and administrative repression under the consecutive BJP regimes, culminating into a state of undeclared emergency. The combined effect is a climate of fear that deters independent journalism, community mobilization, watchdog activism, and democratic contestation—striking at the heart of the freedoms guaranteed under Articles 19 and 21 and India’s obligations under the ICCPR.

4.1. Criminalization of Speech, Assembly, and Advocacy

Criminalization of Speech, Assembly, and Advocacy has intensified as successive governments have increasingly deployed sedition (IPC 124A), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and the IT Act to silence dissent.

Sedition: Annual FIRs rose from under 50 pre-2014 to more than 500 by 2024. Even after the Supreme Court’s 2022 suspension of new sedition prosecutions pending review, state police forces continued to invoke related provisions (e.g., “promoting enmity,” “waging war”) to reproduce the same chilling effect. Students, journalists, comedians, academics, and ordinary citizens posting political criticism on social media have been targeted.

UAPA: Arrests surged by over 200% between 2014 and 2024, with conviction rates under 3%—a statistical signature of misuse. Many detainees, including student leaders and human-rights activists, have languished in jail for years due to stringent bail provisions, effectively converting pre-trial detention into punishment.

PMLA: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiated more than 5,000 investigations from 2014–2025, a tenfold increase from the prior decade. Opposition politicians, independent media founders, NGOs, and activists constitute a disproportionate share of targets. The Supreme Court’s 2022 judgment upholding broad ED powers, including reversed burden of proof, has magnified fears of selective deployment.

Digital policing under the IT Act: Platform takedown orders, website blocks, and criminal complaints related to “fake news,” “public order,” and “insult to religion” have surged. Several states have used Section 66A-like provisions despite the section being struck down in 2015, illustrating entrenched institutional habits of controlling digital discourse.

These measures go beyond law enforcement; they represent a structural strategy of anticipatory suppression, where the threat of criminalization itself becomes a tool to silence potential dissent.

4.1.1. SLAPP Suits as Instruments of Intimidation

Strategic lawsuits against whistleblowers, journalists, academics, and activists have increased in frequency and aggression. These suits—often initiated or supported by powerful political or corporate interests—serve to chill criticism, deplete resources, and signal high costs for dissent. They function as an informal censorship regime parallel to state coercive power.

For more information on “SLAPP”s with concrete instances/case-studies, view the following:

4.2. Suppression of Mass Movements: From CAA to Farmers’ Protests

Large-scale democratic mobilizations have been systematically met with criminal, administrative, and infrastructural repression:

CAA–NRC–NPR protests (2019–2020): Over 2,000 arrests, targeted FIRs against organizers, multiple custodial abuses, internet shutdowns, and violent policing—particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Protest sites such as Shaheen Bagh were framed as “anti-national,” weaponizing communal narratives to delegitimize peaceful dissent. Multiple activists, including young student leaders, were charged under UAPA.

Farmers’ movement (2020–2021): Tens of thousands faced sedition, unlawful assembly, and criminal conspiracy charges. At protest sites near Delhi borders, the internet was repeatedly suspended, roads barricaded, and essential services interrupted. Post–Lakhimpur Kheri, investigations and prosecutions proceeded unevenly, reinforcing perceptions of structural bias.

Post-2023 protests on unemployment, reservation policies, and land rights: Smaller but frequent demonstrations across Bihar, Maharashtra, and Haryana have been met with preventive detention, sealing of venues, and broad prohibitory orders. In 2024–2025, eviction protests in Assam and forest rights movements in central India saw intensified police action and FIRs against tribal leaders.

The pattern indicates that peaceful assembly is tolerated only when it avoids challenging state priorities, reducing protest rights to a conditional privilege.

5. Surveillance, Digital Governance, Algorithmic Control, and the Aadhaar-State: The Architecture of an Emerging Panopticonist Democracy

India’s turn toward a pervasive surveillance state—digital, legal, algorithmic, and infrastructural—marks one of the most consequential transformations of its democratic order. Spyware deployments, hyper-centralized ID systems, telecom-tracking platforms like Sanchar Saathi, Aadhaar-linked governance, predictive-policing algorithms, and expanding legal access powers have coalesced into an integrated architecture of continuous monitoring. Privacy protections remain weak, easily circumvented, and increasingly symbolic. The result is a polity in which citizens are ever more visible to the state, even as the state becomes progressively opaque.

This structural shift is reinforced by a parallel and worsening crisis of data opacity: systematic data paucity, politically motivated data denial, and manipulation of official statistics. Key national datasets on employment, health, crime, environment, and welfare have been delayed, altered, or withdrawn; independent researchers face growing barriers to accessing datasets held by agencies such as NSSO, NCRB, ISI, UIDAI, and others. This pervasive “will-to-hide” produces an inverted accountability regime: the state knows more and shows less, while citizens know less and are simultaneously monitored more.

The democratic implications are severe:

• surveillance tools enable tracking and chilling of dissent;
• opaque or falsified datasets cripple evidence-based scrutiny;
• algorithmic welfare systems automate exclusion;
• media, already constrained by criminalization and corporate capture, operates in an informational vacuum; and
• electoral processes face manipulation risks through profiling and Aadhaar-linked roll tampering.

Together, these dynamics create an asymmetric, panoptic information order that resembles a Foucauldian disciplinary state: high visibility of citizens, near-total obscurity of power. What emerges is not merely a privacy breakdown but the blueprint of a digital administrative dystopia.

5.1. Expansive and Unaccountable Surveillance Infrastructure

5.1.1. Pegasus and the Normalisation of Targeted Espionage

The 2021 Pegasus disclosures revealed more than 300 Indian targets, including journalists, election strategists, unionists, student leaders, lawyers, and opposition politicians. Multiple infections were forensically confirmed. Yet no independent judicial inquiry was permitted; the Supreme Court-appointed committee’s 2021–2022 report was withheld from the public, effectively collapsing transparency.
This impunity signals a structural shift: surveillance has become unexamined statecraft, operating without parliamentary scrutiny, judicial oversight, or statutory guardrails.

5.1.2. COVID-era Data Exposures and Mass Vulnerability

The 2023 CoWIN breach, potentially exposing the personal data of 1.1 billion Indians, highlighted catastrophic security lapses in critical public databases. Aadhaar-linked welfare and health databases suffered repeated leaks. The paradox is stark: citizens are heavily surveilled but poorly protected, making mass vulnerability a systemic feature of the digital state.

5.1.3. Sanchar Saathi and Telecommunications Panopticism

The expansion of Sanchar Saathi, nominally aimed at curbing cyber fraud, raised major concerns due to capabilities for real-time device monitoring, IMEI mapping, and cross-provider SIM-linkage tracing. Technologists warn that it has evolved into an Orwellian telecom dragnet, enabling granular profiling without oversight.
Sanchar Saathi exemplifies a Foucauldian panopticon: the constant possibility of surveillance becomes a mechanism of discipline, chill, and self-censorship.

5.2. Data Protection in Name, Surveillance in Practice

5.2.1. DPDP Act, 2023–25: A Privacy Law that Legalizes Surveillance

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP), despite being billed as a landmark privacy reform, enhances state power rather than constraining it.
Key concerns include:

• Sweeping government exemptions for undefined “state functions” and “national interest.”
• A Data Protection Board lacking independence, operational autonomy, or enforcement capacity.
• No meaningful safeguards against real-time surveillance, metadata tracking, or cross-database profiling.
• Absence of data-portability rights, algorithmic transparency mandates, or mandatory breach notifications.

In effect, the DPDP Act creates a legal façade of privacy while codifying asymmetric state power, embedding surveillance into routine governance.

5.2.2. Data as a Governance Weapon

Aadhaar, mobility data, welfare databases, telecom identifiers, and financial records are now interoperable, enabling unprecedented levels of cross-platform citizen monitoring. Combined with predictive-policing algorithms, facial-recognition deployments, and national-security exemptions, India is fast approaching a dystopian administrative order in which the state knows more about citizens than citizens ever know about the state.

5.3. Algorithmic Governance: Aadhaar, Automation, Profiling

5.3.1. Aadhaar: From Voluntary ID to Disciplinary Infrastructure

Aadhaar’s entanglement with nearly all spheres—welfare, pensions, PDS, NREGA, banking access, SIM registration, mobility permits, and now voter-roll integration—has transformed it into an all-pervasive gatekeeping mechanism.
Since 2016, over two million people have been excluded from welfare schemes due to biometric failures, disproportionately affecting the elderly, rural workers, and Adivasi communities.
Mandatory Aadhaar-bank seeding has produced unauthorized auto-withdrawals and misdirected transfers (“ghost routing”).

Aadhaar’s creeping integration with voter rolls, documented in several states in 2024–2025, opens the door to mass deletions, demographic profiling, micro-targeting, and digital voter suppression, directly undermining electoral integrity.

5.3.2. Predictive Policing, Facial Recognition, and Automated Extraction

Predictive-policing systems and facial-recognition networks—piloted since 2019 in Delhi, Hyderabad, Lucknow, and other cities—operate without statutory authorization, auditing mechanisms, or human-rights safeguards.
Civil-society assessments show error rates reaching 95–99%, disproportionately misidentifying Muslims, Dalits, migrants, and protest participants. These tools, built on biased datasets, deepen caste-religious profiling and normalize pre-emptive criminalization.

Real-time biometric extraction—CCTV triangulation, gait analysis, crowd analytics—further entrenches a coercive digital architecture fundamentally incompatible with global human-rights norms.

5.4. Press Freedom in Retreat: Surveillance-Enabled Suppression

5.4.1. Criminalization of Journalism

India’s press-freedom decline is acute and lived:

• More than 10 journalists are killed annually since 2020, often for reporting on corruption, land grabs, mining mafias, and political patronage.
• UAPA, PMLA, IT Act, and sedition-adjacent charges are routinely deployed, turning investigative journalism into a high-risk activity.
• Newsrooms face raids, device seizures, and financial probes, especially when reporting on electoral finance, corporate-state nexus, or human-rights violations.

5.4.2. Media Capture and Consolidation

India’s news media is now dominated by a handful of crony conglomerates — chiefly Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance (Network18, 40+ channels) and Gautam Adani’s AMPL (NDTV, Quint stakes) — that control over 70% of private TV and digital reach after aggressive post-2020 takeovers. These acquisitions have gutted editorial independence: NDTV flipped from critical to compliant post-Adani entry, while advertisers tied to the same tycoons enforce self-censorship across the board. Regional, minority-language, and independent outlets are starved of revenue and reach, shrinking India’s media diversity to a Hindi-heartland, ruling-party echo chamber.

Public broadcasters have fared worse. Doordarshan and All India Radio, already under executive sway, saw their budgets hiked 25% in 2024–25 for “nation-building” content while investigative scrutiny vanished. The draft Broadcasting Bill 2024 further empowers a government-nominated council to pre-censor digital and private content, effectively merging state and oligarchic control. India’s press freedom rank slid to 159/180 in 2025 as a direct result.

This capture turns journalism into managed narrative, silences dissent, and starves voters of the pluralistic information required for free and fair elections.

5.4.3. Surveillance as a Weapon Against Journalists

Journalists now operate in an environment where their communications, movements, finances, and source networks may be monitored. Online harassment, troll armies, and disinformation campaigns weaponize digital footprints to silence critics.
The result is self-censorship—the most invisible yet pervasive form of repression.

5.5. Systemic Implications: A Democracy That Watches Its Citizens Instead of Being Watched

India’s surveillance and data-governance architecture collectively represents a democratic inversion:

• Citizens lose privacy; the state gains secrecy.
• Civic actors become vulnerable; institutions become unaccountable.
• Rights become conditional on technological compliance.
• Welfare is automated; exclusion is automated; policing is automated.
• Elections are vulnerable to algorithmic profiling and Aadhaar-linked manipulation.

These systems interlock across sectors:
Aadhaar enables biometric triage → DPDP legalizes bulk access → predictive policing operationalizes profiling → Sanchar Saathi enables real-time location mapping → media suppression hides the system → manipulated data conceals its consequences.

What emerges is not accountable constitutional democracy but algorithmic governance, where opaque systems—not public institutions—determine who receives benefits, who is policed, and who gets to vote.

This is not merely institutional unmaking; it is epistemic unmaking:
a restructuring of what the state knows, what citizens can know, and what the public is allowed to know.

6. Corporate Capture and the Crony-Economic Order

India’s democratic crisis is inseparable from the accelerating consolidation of corporate power, where economic policy, regulatory design, and political finance increasingly converge to benefit a narrow oligarchic elite led by the BJP in association with its chosen business magnates such as Adani, Ambani, Piramal, and others. By 2025, this nexus has hardened into a crony-economic order—one in which the BJP-infiltrated state institutions act less as regulators and more as guarantors of corporate accumulation.

6.1. Market Concentration and the Capture of Public Narrative

As noted before, the top five business conglomerates now dominate over 80% of India’s media revenues, spanning television, digital news, print, radio, and distribution infrastructure. This consolidation is not simply economic—it is political:

• Editorial lines correlate with government priorities, especially on security, dissent, and elections.
• Coverage of corporate scandals (e.g., stock manipulation allegations, environmental violations, or labor issues) routinely disappears or is reframed as “anti-national.”
• Investigative journalism has been replaced by content aligned with state–corporate messaging, shrinking the space for watchdog reporting.

The result is a managed public sphere, where information asymmetry becomes a structural tool for democratic manipulation.

6.2. Political Finance as a Corporate–State Exchange Mechanism

The post-2024 unsealing of Electoral Bond data exposed a consolidated architecture of policy-for-finance reciprocity, even without requiring access to visitor logs or internal communications. Notable patterns include:

• Adani Group, Reliance (Ambani), Piramal, Vedanta, Bharti, and RP-Sanjiv Goenka together contributing several thousand crores across multiple tranches, often immediately preceding or coinciding with major regulatory decisions.
• Sectoral clusters of donations mapped almost perfectly to favourable clearances, exemptions, and procurement gains.
• Pharmaceutical, mining, telecom, real-estate, and infrastructure conglomerates donating heavily during critical policy windows—price-cap revisions, land-acquisition permissions, tax-holiday notifications, or import-licence relaxations.
• Pharmaceutical companies exceeding ₹1,000 crore in donations, followed by relief measures in compliance audits, GMP inspections, and accelerated approvals.
• Infrastructure giants—notably Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, and Larsen & Toubro—donating large sums immediately before securing airports, ports, and highway mega-contracts.

The structural implication is clear: political finance has replaced lobbying, operating as a covert, state-sanctioned pay-to-play mechanism.

6.3. Sectoral Favouritism: From Natural Resources to Digital Infrastructure

The pattern of selective corporate ascendancy is visible across sectors, with Adani, Ambani, Vedanta, and select telecom and defence conglomerates as primary beneficiaries.

6.3.1. Natural Resources & Mining

• Adani Group emerged as one of the largest private operators of coal blocks after 2018, securing mines in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha—often through “technical criteria” that disadvantaged smaller bidders.
• Vedanta repeatedly received favourable treatment in bauxite, zinc, and copper mining zones, including accelerated forest clearances despite community objections in Kodingamali and Niyamgiri-adjacent belts.
• Several of these allocations closely followed major Electoral Bond donations from these conglomerates and their subsidiaries.
• Environmental clearances for mining and power projects—especially in Adivasi regions—were routinely granted under fast-track or “exceptional” provisions, bypassing or diluting public hearings.

6.3.2. Ports, Airports & Logistic

• Adani Group’s meteoric rise is the clearest example:
• From operating just one minor port pre-2014, Adani now controls the majority of India’s private ports, including key hubs in Gujarat, Kerala, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh.
• Between 2018 and 2020, the group won six airports in a single bidding cycle, despite not being previously qualified and despite internal objections within the Airports Authority of India.
• These acquisitions aligned closely with Electoral Bond contributions and were followed by tailored relaxations, including lowered financial-capability thresholds and post-award concession amendments.
• The 2023 stock-manipulation allegations centering on Adani triggered global scrutiny (including actions by US-based short sellers), but domestic investigative progress slowed or remained inconclusive.
• Logistics expansion via inland waterways and railway sidings also benefited Reliance Logistics and Adani Logistics, often through redirected or relaxed eligibility norms.

6.3.3. Telecom & Digital Infrastructure

• Reliance Jio (Ambani) benefited from repeated regulatory restructurings:
• Spectrum pricing recalibrated in ways that eased acquisition for Jio.
• Reduction and deferment of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues.
• Merger and consolidation rules revised at key moments facilitating Jio’s market dominance.
• Legislation centralising digital-ID, telecom surveillance, and data-governance powers indirectly strengthens private entities—especially Reliance—that are deeply embedded in India’s digital ecosystem.
• Electoral Bond disclosures revealed substantial contributions by telecom-linked entities prior to these regulatory shifts.

6.3.4. Defence & Strategic Infrastructure

• Adani Defence, L&T Defence, and several newly formed private entities won major defence contracts historically reserved for public-sector units (HAL, BEL), despite limited track records.
• The acceleration of private entry into UAVs, missile systems, and naval platforms coincided with donation spikes by parent conglomerates.
• Access to sensitive zones—border logistics, surveillance infrastructure, private SEZ-like defence clusters—expanded rapidly for select corporates with direct political linkages.

6.3.5. Piramal’s Cronyism: A Nexus of Political Patronage and Corporate Power

• Electoral Bond Ties to BJP: Ajay Piramal and his companies are reported to have donated ₹85 crore to the BJP via electoral bonds, suggesting a deep political alignment.
• Flashnet Transaction with Piyush Goyal: In 2014, Piramal Estates bought shares in Flashnet Info Solutions, owned by Union Minister Piyush Goyal and his wife, at an astronomically high premium — shortly after Goyal became a minister. Critics allege this deal reflects a quid-pro-quo relationship.
• DHFL Acquisition Under Favourable Conditions: Piramal’s takeover of the AAA-rated NBFC Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) via the ill-conceived IBC process has been framed as politically enabled. Observers argue that his crony links helped him acquire DHFL at a steep discount (45k crores=1 rupee!), to the detriment of lakhs of small depositors. (More on this later)
• Strategic Legal and Financial Maneuvering: Allegations include the use of legal firewalls (stay orders, defamation suits) to suppress dissent and delay scrutiny, and using mergers or restructuring (demergers) to diffuse accountability.
• Regulatory Capture and Impunity: Critics claim that Piramal’s combination of political donations, legal influence, and economic power creates a state-corporate nexus where the usual checks and balances are weakened.

Across all sectors, the cycle is identical: policy benefits → corporate windfall → political contributions → further policy consolidation. This reciprocal loop—most visible in the trajectories of Adani, Ambani, Vedanta, Bharti, and select pharma giants—has structurally redefined India’s political economy into a closed circuit of power, finance, and regulatory privilege. → tighter corporate–state merger.

6.4. Regulatory Deference and the Erosion of Competitive Neutrality

Regulatory institutions—SEBI, TRAI, CCI, DGCI, DGCA, and sector-specific ministries—display an increasing pattern of non-intervention, delay, or selective enforcement:

• Investigations into market abuse, related-party transactions, or cartelisation stall for years.
• Penalties are symbolic, often delayed or withdrawn.
• Major corporate groups are routinely exempted from norms enforced on smaller entities.

This produces a two-tier economy: a rule-bound regime for ordinary businesses, and a discretionary regime for conglomerates with political proximity. Such regulatory asymmetry directly concerns global accountability bodies like Transparency International, EITI, Freedom House, OSF, and OGP, given its implications for corruption risk, capture, and public procurement opacity.

6.5. Cronyism as a Threat to Democratic and Economic Integrity

This corporate–state fusion has wide-reaching consequences:

• Democratic capture: through media control, political financing, and surveillance-enabled governance.
• Economic distortion and Ecological Concerns: competition hollowed out, SMEs strangled, public assets consolidated in a few hands. Environmental guidelines sidelined to protect entrenched crony corporate interests.
• Policy distortion: laws and regulations designed around the needs of specific conglomerates rather than public interest.
• Judicial stagnation: slow-moving probes into market manipulation and procurement irregularities, reinforcing impunity.

The resulting order is not a malfunctioning market—it is a deliberate political economy of favour, where governance becomes an instrument of wealth concentration and dissent becomes a threat to capital–state alignment.

7. International Treaty Obligations and India’s Global Standing

India’s democratic erosion now constitutes treaty-level non-compliance. Across human rights, anti-corruption, corporate accountability, and transparency regimes, the gap between formal commitments and actual governance has widened sharply—undermining India’s credibility in multilateral forums and warranting closer international scrutiny.

7.1. ICCPR: Systematic Curtailment of Freedoms and Due Process

As a State Party to the ICCPR, India must protect freedoms of expression, assembly, and safeguards against arbitrary detention. Instead:

• Article 19: Sedition (pre-2022), UAPA, and IT Act provisions used expansively against journalists, activists, students; 10,000+ politically targeted detentions since 2014.
• Article 21: Excessive force and prohibitory orders during CAA and farmers’ protests; world-leading frequency of internet shutdowns without proportionality tests.
• Articles 9 & 14: UAPA conviction rate below 3%, yet prolonged incarceration remains routine.

India’s ICCPR compliance is now selective, fragile, and increasingly incompatible with international human-rights jurisprudence.

7.2. UNCAC: Opaque Political Finance and Regulatory Capture

Under UNCAC, India is obligated to uphold preventive anti-corruption norms. Current practice directly contradicts these commitments:

• Electoral Bonds created unprecedented opacity in political finance, later revealed to be tied to quid-pro-quo contracts.
• Major sectors—financial resolution, natural resources, procurement—display growing regulatory capture.
• High-profile corporate–state nexus cases show weak preventive mechanisms and delayed investigations.

Instead of transparency-driven anticorruption governance, India operates under an increasingly centralized, opaque, corporate–state alignment, incompatible with UNCAC.

7.3. UNGPs: Weak Due Diligence and Minimal Corporate Accountability

India’s adherence to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights remains superficial:

• State due-diligence failures in cases involving DHFL, extractive industries, industrial pollution, and land dispossession.
• EIA 2020 dilutions enabling post-facto clearances and limiting public participation.
• Fragmented grievance systems that routinely fail affected communities.

Corporate operations in India enjoy high state protection with low human-rights obligations, diverging sharply from UNGP norms.

7.4. Open Government Partnership: Retreat From Global Transparency Standards

Since disengaging from OGP processes after 2016, India has:

• Restricted access to official data through delayed or selective releases.
• Weakened RTI enforcement mechanisms.
• Expanded secrecy in public finance, contracting, and regulatory decision-making.

This marks a deliberate departure from global norms of transparency, civic participation, and accountability.

7.5. Why This Matters

These patterns reveal that India’s democratic crisis is not merely domestic. It represents:

• Breach of binding international obligations,
• A systematic retreat from multilateral norms, and
• A reputational decline with implications for global trust, investment, and diplomatic engagement.

This trajectory justifies intensified monitoring by OHCHR, UNCAC Secretariat, GANHRI, OGP, and UN Working Groups on Business & Human Rights.

8. Constitutional Linkages and Democratic Stakes

Observed institutional failures implicate fundamental constitutional guarantees as enshrined in the Indian Constitution, including Article 14 (equality before the law), Article 21 (life and personal liberty), Article 32 (judicial remedies), and the state’s directive principles under Articles 38–39. The erosion of transparency mechanisms and rights-protection intermediaries directly undermines citizens’ ability to access remedies and engage meaningfully in democratic governance. For instance, dilution of the Right to Information (more on this to follow) compromises Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression), while pervasive surveillance encroaches upon Article 21 privacy rights, as affirmed in the 2017 Puttaswamy judgment.

These constitutional linkages intersect with economic and social inequalities. Lack of transparency in government contracts, public spending, and corporate lobbying systematically restricts vulnerable groups’ access to justice and public resources. Judicial delays, limited accountability mechanisms, and opaque administrative practices exacerbate exclusion, weakening citizens’ capacity to participate in decision-making. Ultimately, such institutional opacity threatens not only individual rights but also the broader democratic fabric, undermining trust, civic engagement, and equitable development.

9. Economic and Social Impact on Vulnerable Populations

Human rights arguments become sharper when anchored in tangible, lived impacts:

• Regulatory opacity and economic harm: Small investors, rural populations, minorities, and workers disproportionately bear the costs of opaque governance. In the DHFL crisis, small depositors lost savings equivalent to years of income, deepening poverty among retirees and vulnerable households.
• Withholding public welfare data: Opaqueness in schemes like NFSA and MGNREGA, as well as health and education indicators, directly harms citizens. Between 2020–2025, MGNREGA delays affected over 100 million workers, with opaque fund allocations resulting in denied wages for rural poor. NFSA exclusions via Aadhaar linking impacted approximately 50 million food entitlements, exacerbating hunger and social marginalization.
• Disasters and environmental governance opacity: The 2020 EIA amendments diluted public consultation requirements, enabling projects in ecologically sensitive areas without scrutiny. This has displaced indigenous communities and heightened climate vulnerability among marginalized groups.

These examples illustrate systemic links between cronyism (favored projects), digital exclusion (Aadhaar failures), and weakened human rights protections. Grounded in concrete harms, such evidence strengthens appeals to human rights bodies and EU-based advocacy partners.

Despite rapid GDP-centric narratives, multiple independent global indexes from 2023–25 reveal a consistent pattern of structural inequality, governance deficits, and institutional capture in India. These indicators collectively undermine the government’s claims of transparency, accountability, and inclusive development.

9.1. Human Development and Social Well-Being

• Human Development Index (HDI) 2023/24: India ranks 134th out of 193 with a score of 0.644, placing it in the “medium human development” category. Progress in health, education, and income remains uneven, especially across class, caste- and gender-based lines.
• World Happiness Index 2025: India stands at 118th out of 147, indicating low levels of social trust, institutional confidence, and subjective well-being.

9.2. Hunger, Nutrition, and Basic Rights

• Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2024: India ranks 105th, showing persistent high levels of child wasting, undernutrition, and food insecurity.
  These outcomes directly contradict constitutional commitments to the right to life, dignity, and food security.

9.3. Economic Inequality and Labour Precariatisation

• Income Inequality (World Bank Gini Report 2023): While a consumption-based Gini of 25.5 appears low, independent research (World Inequality Lab, TIME reporting) shows unprecedented wealth concentration in the top 1%, reflecting structural elite dominance.
• Employment: While official statistics claim an unemployment rate of approximately 3.2–4.5%, these figures are widely contested by independent economists and labour scholars due to definitional changes, survey opacity, and the exclusion of informal and gig-economy precarity from measurement frameworks. Multiple datasets, including the leaked 2017–18 NSSO report, recorded unemployment at 6.1%—its highest in over four decades. Youth unemployment has remained particularly severe, hovering between 10% and nearly 20%, making it one of the most structurally distressed labour categories globally. The result is a paradox: despite headline claims of “record job creation,” the workforce has experienced shrinking formal-sector absorption, expanding gig and contractual labour, and deepening underemployment—conditions disproportionately borne by Dalits, Adivasis, women, Muslims, and rural workers.

9.4. Environmental and Indigenous Rights Violations

India’s environmental governance has undergone a profound erosion marked by regulatory dilution, extractive corporate expansion, and the systematic suppression of ecological and indigenous rights. Its position in the Nature Conservation Index (2024)—176th out of 180 countries—is emblematic of a deeper structural crisis rather than isolated administrative failure.

Regulatory Dilution and Institutional Capture:
Key environmental safeguards have been weakened through repeated amendments to the Forest Conservation Act (2023), the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) framework, and coastal zone regulations, enabling extractive industries—mining, infrastructure, real-estate, and hydropower—to bypass due process. The EIA 2020 draft, despite widespread public opposition, institutionalized post-facto clearances, effectively legalizing environmental violations after the damage is done. Centralization of authority in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), coupled with the shrinking role of independent scientific and civic stakeholders, reflects a shift from ecological protection toward developmental expediency.

Deforestation and Dispossession:
India witnessed accelerated forest land diversion—over 100,000 hectares between 2015 and 2024—for mining, highway expansion, defense projects, and industrial corridors. This diversion disproportionately affected Adivasi communities, whose territories overlap with resource-rich regions. The amendments to the Forest Conservation Act in 2023 weakened the requirement of Gram Sabha consent, subverting the landmark protections guaranteed under the Forest Rights Act (2006). This has resulted in forced evictions, mass dispossession, and escalated conflict in states such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam.

Climate Vulnerability and Policy Contradictions:
Even as India positions itself globally as a climate leader, domestic policy reveals stark contradictions. Coal dependence continues to expand, with government projections envisioning increased capacity rather than a phased reduction. Industrial and infrastructural mega-projects continue to encroach upon ecologically fragile regions—Aravallis, Western Ghats, Sundarbans, and Himalayan ecosystems—despite mounting disaster risks. Catastrophic events—glacial lake bursts, landslides, urban flooding (e.g., Bengaluru, Chennai), and heatwave fatalities—have sharply increased, yet institutional response remains fragmented, reactive, and politically insulated.

Indigenous Resistance as Criminalized Ecology:
Communities defending forests, rivers, and sacred geographies face criminalization under sedition, UAPA, and public order laws. Environmental defenders in Niyamgiri, Hasdeo Aranya, and Dibang Valley have been surveilled, detained, or restricted. Public participation mechanisms—public hearings, environmental tribunals, community consent processes—have been weakened or made inaccessible. State and corporate narratives routinely frame indigenous stewardship as obstruction, marginalizing ecological knowledge systems and constitutional rights.

Toxic Air, Water Inequality, and Public Health Harm:
India continues to host 14 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, with Delhi regularly registering hazardous air quality. Rivers such as the Yamuna, Ganga, and Brahmaputra remain burdened with industrial effluents, untreated sewage, and chemical contaminants. Despite the rhetoric of flagship campaigns, water bodies and wetlands are increasingly converted, encroached upon, or privatized. Pollution burdens fall disproportionately on low-income, Dalit, Muslim, and peri-urban working-class communities—reinforcing environmental injustice.

Taken together, these trends illustrate not merely weak environmental performance but the emergence of an extractive governance model where ecological degradation, indigenous displacement, regulatory erosion, and climate vulnerability converge—producing an escalating socio-ecological crisis with irreversible implications.

9.5. Manufactured Islamophobia and Market Fundamentalism

The current political dispensation in India headed by the BJP (under the NDA coalition) employs Islamophobia as a manufactured psychosocial and political tool to serve as an overt mask for a deeper, covert economic objective, characterized by market fundamentalism and crony governmentality. This strategy relies on the displacement of grave socio-economic catastrophes—such as unemployment and issues of Roti-Kapra-Makan (Bread-Cloth-Shelter)—by propagating pseudo-narratives of manufactured hate against the Muslim minority, especially with regard to crafting issues on manipulated demographics, appropriating historical claims and so on. This serves to distract the populace while simultaneously facilitating the concentration of wealth among the politically favoured corporate class.

The paradox inherent in this approach is exposed by the alleged alignment between the regime’s political actions and the very elements it rhetorically condemns. Domestically, the government’s policies are linked to a structure of crony and monopoly capitalism involving high-level systemic corruption and collusion between the state, corporate groups, religious gurus and the underworld (the shadow economy). This relationship is underscored by allegations concerning financial scandals, such as the DHFL case, where funds in the name of “political charity” were purportedly channeled to the BJP from groups associated with illicit finance or figures labeled as “Islamic terrorists,” including Dawood Ibrahim and Iqbal Mirchi. This highlights a cynical prioritization of profit and power over ideological purity.

Similarly, the regime’s foreign policy demonstrates strategic equivocation where market logic supersedes its domestic anti-Islam rhetoric. Despite officially non-recognizing the group, the government has provided substantial financial commitment and aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover. This assistance, which included Rs 200 crore in development aid in annual budgets, is officially framed as humanitarian support for the Afghan people, but it is interpreted as a geopolitical maneuver driven by strategic interests—such as countering regional rivals and maintaining access to trade routes like the Chabahar Port. The upgrading of the Indian mission in Kabul to a full embassy under the Taliban reflects this pragmatism, confirming that, in the regime’s calculation, profit remains the ultimate determinant of policy, while religion is merely a rhetorical instrument for mass control.

View more on this as follows:

9.6. Why These Indices Matter

Taken together, these global rankings demonstrate:

1. Deteriorating governance quality despite claims of reform.
2. Widening inequality and elite capture, often enabled by opaque state–corporate linkages.
3. Deepening vulnerabilities for marginalized communities, especially Adivasis, Dalits, minorities, migrant workers, and rural poor.
4. Erosion of institutional checks due to politicisation of bureaucracy, weakening of regulatory bodies, and shrinking civic space.

These indicators are not isolated numbers — they show a consistent structural decline in rights, justice, and democratic accountability.

CHAPTER II

NHRC — A Public Institution in Crisis

1. Concerns and Reflections

• Accreditation and international concerns. GANHRI’s re-accreditation process flagged deficiencies in NHRC independence and pluralism in 2023–2025, culminating in a March 2025 recommendation for downgrade to “B”-status — a formal downgrade anticipated in March 2026 unless remedial measures are demonstrably enacted. This recommendation reflects serious questions about independence, mandate fulfilment, and compliance with the Paris Principles. In May 2025, GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) recommended the downgrade, upheld later that year, citing persistent issues like executive influence and lack of pluralism.
• Structural deficits. Executive-dominated appointment processes, insufficient representation of women and minorities, and continued operational dependence on state institutions (including police-led investigative involvement) undermine impartial inquiry and victim confidence. Reports highlight that NHRC appointments remain heavily influenced by the BJP-run executive, with only 20% female representation and minimal minority inclusion as of 2025.
• Operational failures. Sporadic engagement with civil society, weak responsiveness to systemic violations (including large-scale economic rights harms), and opaque case-handling practices have eroded NHRC’s moral authority. Annual reports show a backlog of over 50,000 cases, with less than 10% addressing economic rights violations.

2. Paris Principles and NHRC Compliance — A Concise Assessment

The Paris Principles establish the global gold standard for National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), requiring independence, pluralism, transparency, and effective investigative authority. Between 2014 and 2025, India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has progressively drifted from these benchmarks. GANHRI’s 2025 review captures this deterioration with unprecedented clarity.

2.1. Assessment of NHRC Against Paris Principles

Paris Principles Criterion	Ideal Standard	NHRC Condition (2014–2025)	Assessment
Mandate & Competence	Broad, proactive rights protection	Statutory mandate intact but increasingly reactive, selective in case-taking	Partial
Autonomy	Clear independence from the Executive	Appointment processes influenced by Executive; prevalence of police officials in key roles	Compromised
Pluralism	Representation from civil society, minorities, and diverse social groups	Limited civil-society inclusion; shrinking diversity in membership	Non-compliant
Resources	Adequate, autonomous staffing & budget	State-dependent financing; investigative and forensic capacity weakened	Partial
Investigative Powers	Impartial, timely, effective inquiries	Slow, constrained, and selective investigations; reluctance around political or security-sector violations	Partial
Transparency	Open reporting; public access to decisions and case files	Opaque case-handling; delayed or incomplete reporting; limited public communication	Weak
International Accreditation	Full “A” status (GANHRI) based on compliance	GANHRI Sub-Committee on Accreditation recommended downgrade to “B” in March 2025	At Risk

2.1.1. What the Table Reveals: A Systemic, Not Incidental, Decline

The failures are structural:

• Executive proximity has eroded institutional independence.
• Police-dominated leadership has undermined the NHRC’s credibility, particularly in torture, custodial violence, or minority-protection cases.
• Shrinking transparency has weakened public trust—they release fewer detailed reports, publish fewer case outcomes, and limit information-sharing.
• Under-resourcing has led to backlogs, cursory investigations, and minimal field verification.
• Pluralism deficits mean the Commission no longer reflects India’s social diversity or civil-society perspectives.

Combined, these conditions align with GANHRI’s observation: the NHRC is drifting away from the Paris Principles framework that justifies its international legitimacy.

2.2. Implications of a Downgrade

A shift from “A” to “B” status would:

• Exclude NHRC from speaking rights at the UN Human Rights Council.
• Reduce India’s credibility in global human rights forums.
• Undermine the institutional guarantees India cites in its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
• Signal internationally that India’s domestic human rights protections are institutionally compromised.

2.3. Why This Matters for the Open Letter

NHRC’s weakening goes beyond bureaucratic failure— it reflects a democratic and institutional crisis, wherein the national body responsible for safeguarding rights has become:

• selective,
• executive-aligned, and
• structurally incapable of confronting systemic violations.

The Paris Principles table is therefore not just an assessment tool—it is a diagnostic of India’s shrinking civic space, directly relevant to the mandates of OHCHR, Amnesty, HRW, OSF, and Transparency International.

3. Case Study — The DHFL Debacle (2019–2025) and NHRC’s Inaction

Lakhs of small fixed deposit (FD) and non-convertible debenture (NCD) holders in the once AAA-rated NBFC Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) case—many of them elderly retirees, retired Indian Army personnel and their widows, physically challenged individuals, Jesuit and other charitable institutions, and low-income families—have endured profound exclusion from the insolvency resolution process under the ill-conceived, heavily amended Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC, 2016), leaving them financially devastated amid the COVID-19 crisis, due to a resolution plan of a politically favoured corporate tycoon named Ajay Piramal. Although the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved Piramal’s resolution plan on 7 June 2021—even after its earlier 19 May 2021 directive instructing the RBI-appointed Committee of Creditors (CoC) to reconsider the full-repayment proposal for small depositors, an instruction that was ignored and effectively bypassed within days—the process suffered from severe procedural defects. This was later confirmed by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in its landmark ruling on 27 January 2022, which held that the DHFL Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) itself was contrary to law, that the Resolution Professional’s conduct was riddled with material irregularities, and that Section 66 of the IBC Act (benefits all creditors) was ignored in the resolution process. Despite these findings, depositors’ rights were almost systematically excluded from CoC deliberations throughout the process and were ultimately denied any meaningful recovery of their entire principal or interest.

The Supreme Court’s intervention on 11 April 2022, staying the said NCLAT order, entrenched this exclusion by effectively insulating the Piramal resolution plan from scrutiny. Matters worsened with the Supreme Court’s 1 April 2025 judgment, which unequivocally upheld the Piramal plan by extinguishing the substantive rights of evidently financially abused DHFL FD and NCD holders, many of whom suffered catastrophic haircuts and received only 23.07% of their hard-earned life savings. Delivered by a bench headed by Justice Bela M. Trivedi⤡ ⤡ (along with Justice S. C. Sharma⤡), widely criticised for her proximity to the ruling dispensation, and strongly defended in court by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta⤡, the verdict affirmed the CoC’s decisions while dismissing the depositors’ claims as non-justiciable within the insolvency framework. Review petitions against this apex court’s order were dismissed by Justice Sharma without due consideration and argumentation. Thus, the ruling effectively legitimized the erasure of depositor rights, even in the face of demonstrable procedural irregularities, forensic red flags, and unresolved fraud allegations pending since 2020.

Compounding these harms, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has mounted an inadequate and dismissive response when DHFL victims appealed to it for rightful restitution under the principles of “Business and Human Rights” (also part of UNGPs and thereby forms part of international standards of law), exemplifying both procedural lapses and a profound credibility crisis.

Multiple complaints from DHFL victims’ families, including a detailed 2022 filing (Diary No. 17826/IN/2022; Reg. No. 5399/90/0/2022) alleging financial abuse and violations of business-related human rights under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), were swiftly closed by NHRC’s Law Division—often within weeks—reclassifying the issues as mere “civil disputes” involving contractual or property rights, outside its jurisdiction. A renewed open letter to NHRC Chairperson Justice V. Ramasubramanian on January 11, 2025 (diarized as 5992/CR/2025 on January 14, 2025), urging recognition of these as economic rights violations and access to remedy under UNGPs, was dismissed by late March 2025, with no substantive investigation or engagement. This pattern of rejection—across at least three formal complaints—has eroded victim confidence, particularly given NHRC’s history of deferrals in GANHRI accreditation (2016, 2023, 2024) and its failure to proactively intervene, despite India’s declining global human rights standing (ranked 109th out of 165 in 2024 indices).

The Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (henceforth DHFL)⤡ ⤡  debacle, seemingly resolved in 2021 yet mired in victims’ suffering through 2025, interconnects with broader regulatory capture, where executive-influenced bodies like the RBI and IBBI prioritize large creditors over vulnerable stakeholders, and NHRC’s inaction perpetuates a chilling void in protecting economic rights. This not only exacerbates vulnerabilities for small investors—imposing what victims describe as “capital punishment” through what now appears to have become irrecoverable losses—but also underscores a systemic betrayal of constitutional guarantees under Articles 14 and 21, demanding urgent international scrutiny to restore accountability.

CHAPTER III

RTI UNDER THREAT

1. Systemic Erosion of the Right to Information (RTI)

The Right to Information Act—long regarded as one of the world’s most robust transparency frameworks—now faces profound structural and operational erosion. The steady dismantling of its independence, functionality, and safety ecosystem marks a decisive shift from a citizen-empowering law to a weakened instrument vulnerable to executive pressure and institutional bad faith.

1.1. Legal Dilution

The RTI Amendment Act, 2019 substantially weakened the autonomy of Information Commissions by allowing the central government to determine the tenure, salaries, and service conditions of Information Commissioners. This transformation of fixed statutory protections into executive-controlled terms has deeply compromised institutional independence.

By 2025, over 30% of posts remained vacant across Central and State Information Commissions, a manufactured scarcity that has effectively slowed down the entire transparency apparatus and increased the executive’s influence over what information is allowed to surface.

1.2. Administrative Obstruction

Beyond legal changes, the everyday functioning of RTI has been degraded through systematic administrative obstruction.

• Delays,
• evasive replies,
• the ubiquitous claim of “missing records,” and
• endless circular transfers between departments

have together created a bureaucratic labyrinth designed to exhaust citizen applicants and neutralize the law’s intent.

Appeal pendency at the Central Information Commission crossed 200,000 cases, with average disposal times rising from 6 months in 2014 to over 18 months in 2025. A law premised on timely transparency has thus been rendered structurally incapable of delivering it.

1.3. Violence and Intimidation

The RTI framework is not merely being undermined administratively; it is being violently contested on the ground. Since 2014:

• Over 100 RTI activists have been killed,
• hundreds more have faced threats, harassment, and assault,

with Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh reporting some of the highest incidents, often linked to exposures involving land, infrastructure, and local-level corruption networks.

These are not isolated crimes but part of a pattern of structural deterrence, sending a chilling message to communities that transparency comes at the cost of personal safety. The state’s failure to protect whistleblowers further entrenches opacity and rewards impunity.

1.4. Institutional Patterns of Non-Disclosure

Key institutions—including ministries, policing bodies, regulatory authorities, and quasi-judicial entities—regularly deny, delay, or obstruct RTI requests when they concern high-stakes political or economic interests. This pattern reinforces a deeper state architecture of secrecy in which:

• financial regulators shield questionable market actions,
• police departments refuse accountability for rights violations,
• ministries evade scrutiny of environmental clearances, land acquisition, and public expenditure.

This erosion has cascading consequences:

• It weakens judicial review, because courts depend on RTI-disclosed evidence to check executive actions;
• It undermines NHRC’s already-compromised monitoring capacity, as opacity neutralizes human rights oversight;
• It shrinks civic space, making transparency activists vulnerable and public-interest journalism more precarious.

The cumulative effect is the steady collapse of one of India’s most significant democratic innovations. What was once a transformative instrument enabling citizen oversight has, by 2025, become a hollowed-out structure, increasingly unable to penetrate institutional wrongdoing or protect those who attempt to do so.

2. Case Study: The DHFL Resolution Process as a Microcosm of India’s Transparency Collapse— Information Delayed, Information Denied!

The DHFL insolvency process (2019–2025) provides a stark, empirically traceable illustration of the systemic opacity, regulatory fragmentation, and judicial narrowing of remedies that now structure India’s democratic decline with the demise of the RTI. What appears on paper as a statutory financial resolution is, in practice, a textbook instance of procedural evasion, denial of information, and the structural disempowerment of vulnerable stakeholders.

2.1. The Transparency Vacuum: RTIs as Forensic Evidence of Systemic Obstruction

Between 2024 and 2025, certain DHFL victims filed a series of RTIs seeking basic accountability documents regarding the DHFL’s RBI-appointed Committee of Creditors (CoC):

• expenditure breakdowns,
• minutes and voting records,
• sources of litigation and travel funds,
• audit trails, and
• institutional responsibility for oversight.

These are not discretionary documents; they are foundational to any transparent insolvency process. Yet every RTI—across the RBI, IBBI, DFS, CAG, and even the Supreme Court—produced either denials, serial transfers, template evasions, or strategic non-answers.

2.2. Representative RTI Trail (2024–2025)

Filing Date	RTI ID / Addressee	Key Transfers / Replies	Outcome
22/06/2024	RBIND/R/E/24/04068 (RBI)	Transferred to IBBI; repeated “no data available”; FAA: CPIO cannot create/interpret records	No disclosure; buck-passing initiated
24/08/2024	CAGIN/R/E/24/02309 (CAG)	CAG → DFS → RBI → IBBI; claim: data not centrally maintained	No audit trail of CoC expenditure
Sept 2024	RBIND/R/T/24/00826 (RBI)	“Not under RBI jurisdiction”	RBI distances itself
Oct–Nov 2024	RBIND/R/T/24/01086 (RBI)	Repeats identical non-jurisdiction formula	Template opacity
14/10/2024	1803/RTI/24-25/SCI (Supreme Court)	Asked who holds CoC expenditure records; SCI declines to identify authority	Apex-level refusal to clarify responsibility
14/10/2024	PRSEC/R/E/24/01171 (President’s Secretariat)	PRSEC → DFS → RBI → IBBI loop	Engineered delay via transfer recursion
22/11/2024	RBIND/R/T/24/01086 (RBI, again)	Verbatim repetition of earlier reply	Formal denial without denial
Pre–30/09/2025	RBIND/R/E/25/05544 (RBI)	RBI claims no involvement in CoC constitution or expenditure	Responsibility fragmented

Bottom line: auditors “don’t know their own audits.”
The uniformity of evasions across agencies is itself evidence of systemic secrecy—a choreographed refusal.

2.3. The Regulatory Grey Zone: Designed Ambiguity, Not Administrative Confusion

The opacity is not accidental.

1. The RBI superseded DHFL’s Board in 2019 under the Banking Regulation Act and Section 45-IA of the RBI Act.
2. That supersession directly triggered the appointment of the Interim Resolution Professional.
3. The IRP then formed the CoC under Section 21 of the IBC.

Thus, the CoC’s existence, membership architecture, and procedural orientation were all derivative of RBI’s prior regulatory act.

Yet:

• The RBI claims it is “not privy to CoC minutes.”
• The IBBI insists it only regulates procedure, not the specifics of any CoC.
• The DFS says expenditure details are not in its custody.
• The CAG denies having or auditing the relevant records.

Each agency retreats behind a narrow statutory technicality.
Collectively, they manufacture a regulatory vacuum where thousands of crores of public money can move without scrutiny.

This is not administrative confusion; it is institutional choreography—a systemic, designed opacity.

2.4. The Death of RTI as a Democratic Remedy: Return of the Big Picture

The DHFL case exposes how the Right to Information has been hollowed out:

• Serial transfers blur responsibility.
• Section 2(f) misuse allows officials to deny minutes, voting records, or financial statements by claiming they are “not information.”
• FAA orders mechanically endorse evasions.
• Institutional fear and violence deter further filings. Since 2014, over 100 RTI activists have been killed, many exposing corruption in land, infrastructure, and finance.

The result is a system where asking a question is dangerous and getting an answer is impossible.

2.5. Judicial Landscape: Doctrinal Shield Against Accountability

In its April 2025 handling of DHFL/Piramal appeals, the Supreme Court reinforced the principle that CoC decisions are sacrosanct and ultimate, dramatically narrowing the scope for:

• revisiting valuation disputes,
• addressing inequitable recoveries,
• or questioning conflict-of-interest-laden decisions.

Although the Apex Court formally directed the NCLT/NCLAT to address unresolved avoidance transactions and Section 66 applications, its doctrinal prioritisation of finality over accountability has, in practical terms, foreclosed meaningful justice. For small depositors, the ruling does not merely delay remedy—it institutionalises harm by insulating a politically connected corporate beneficiary from scrutiny while forcing victims to accept loss as “legal closure.” In this configuration, the judiciary’s stance collapses the distinction between resolution and erasure, transforming insolvency law into a shield for economic impunity rather than a mechanism for equitable restitution. With domestic avenues structurally blocked, slow-walked, or rendered symbolic, the path to justice increasingly shifts toward international legal oversight—including the International Court of Justice, the OHCHR, UN Special Rapporteurs, and global human rights bodies—whose mandate includes intervention when national frameworks fail to protect citizens from state-enabled financial dispossession through planned expropriation.

2.6. What the DHFL Case Reveals About India’s Democratic Unmaking as a Whole: The (W)holistic Understanding

The DHFL insolvency is not simply a financial collapse; it is a democratic case study. It reveals:

• A crippled RTI system incapable of producing basic accountability documents.
• A regulatory architecture engineered to distribute power but concentrate opacity.
• A judicial philosophy that prioritizes institutional finality over distributive justice.
• A bureaucratic ecosystem where “no one knows” because no one wishes to know.
• A governance landscape where secrecy is not an aberration but a policy instrument.

For lakhs of small depositors—retirees, widows, and low-income households—the outcome resembles an economic form of capital punishment delivered without transparency, due process, or proportionality. Their constitutional guarantees under Article 14 (equality before law) and Article 21 (right to life and livelihood with dignity) have been effectively suspended by a coordinated administrative–judicial–corporate apparatus engineered to minimise scrutiny and deflect responsibility.

This outcome is also in sharp conflict with international legal principles, particularly the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Under:

• Pillar I (State Duty to Protect): India is obligated to prevent corporate-enabled harm, regulate institutions, and ensure judicial access—not facilitate financial dispossession through opacity and legal shielding.
• Pillar II (Corporate Responsibility to Respect): Beneficiary corporations and financial actors must avoid human rights abuses, including predatory restructuring and exploitative debt resolution mechanisms that disproportionately harm vulnerable populations.
• Pillar III (Access to Remedy): Victims must be guaranteed effective judicial and non-judicial redress—yet in the DHFL case, remedies have been delayed, diluted, or abandoned, transforming process into a procedural mirage.

This constellation of failures constitutes a category of systemic financial abuse, where vulnerable citizens were first encouraged to trust regulated financial institutions and then abandoned to a legal architecture that protects capital concentration over human dignity. In such a framework, insolvency does not merely resolve economic distress—it becomes an instrument through which rights, savings, and futures are quietly expropriated.

2.7. Why This Case Matters

The DHFL case is not an anomaly. It is a model, a paradigm of what happens when:

• transparency collapses,
• regulators disclaim their own actions,
• the RTI system dies,
• and courts privilege managerial discretion over justice.

It is a warning signal for India’s democratic future—and a compelling call for international scrutiny.

CHAPTER IV

OUR DEMANDS

1. Introduction

Building on the structural concerns previously articulated—ranging from institutional weakening of human rights protections, threats to transparency frameworks such as the RTI regime, and the emblematic DHFL case that exposes financial abuse as a human rights violation—the following recommendations emerge as interconnected and necessary. The DHFL insolvency is not an isolated administrative outcome; it stands as a case study of judicial deference, regulatory opacity, corporate favoritism, and democratic backsliding, where citizens’ economic rights were subordinated to elite financial interests.

Accordingly, the proposed reforms and demands must address systemic failures across law, governance, accountability, and public institutional design. These include clear statutory safeguards to prevent financial exploitation, transparency mandates for insolvency and restructuring processes, enforceable protections for investors and depositors, and mechanisms for independent oversight over agencies exercising extraordinary powers. Without such interventions, the conditions that enabled the DHFL dispossession will continue to serve as a template for future corporate reorganizations that convert public savings into private consolidation.

Ultimately, these recommendations are not mere administrative improvements—they are essential democratic defences. They seek to restore public trust, protect vulnerable populations from predatory financial engineering, and reaffirm that rights—economic, constitutional, and human—cannot be selectively suspended in the name of efficiency, expediency, or corporate rescue.

2. Our Recommendations and Demands Explicated

2.1. NHRC Reforms (Priority Actions)

• Institute independent, transparent, and pluralistic appointment processes for NHRC leadership, incorporating parliamentary oversight and civil-society participation.
• Remove or strictly limit police involvement in NHRC investigations to avoid conflicts of interest.
• Ensure adequate, ring-fenced funding and administrative autonomy.
• Implement GANHRI recommendations urgently and publicly before March 2026, with independent verification of reforms.

2.1.2. RTI Strengthening

• Repeal or amend provisions that allow executive control over Information Commissioners’ tenure and remuneration, restoring institutional independence.
• Mandate proactive disclosures across all public bodies, with clear, time-bound deadlines and penalties for non-compliance.
• Establish protective mechanisms—including legal support, security measures, and emergency relocation—for RTI activists facing credible threats.
• Conduct regular public audits of RTI compliance across ministries, regulators, and investigative agencies.

2.1.3. Regulatory Transparency and Insolvency Governance

2.1.3.1. Full Public Disclosure of CoC Decisions and Expenditures
Mandate complete, timely, and machine-readable public disclosure of all Committee of Creditors (CoC) expenditures, valuation reports, and decision-making records, with appropriate safeguards to protect genuinely commercial information. This includes:

• Detailed accounting of funds allocated during resolution processes.
• Transparent disclosure of voting patterns and conflicts of interest within CoCs.

2.1.3.2. External Audits and Judicial Oversight
Introduce mandatory independent external audits and judicial oversight of all insolvency and restructuring processes that affect small creditors and depositors. Audits should ensure:

• Verification of fair treatment and equitable recovery for small depositors.
• Immediate corrective mechanisms in cases of procedural irregularities, coercion, or conflict-of-interest.

2.1.3.3. RBI and IBBI Consistency and Conflict-of-Interest Reporting
Require the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) to publish:

• Regular reports on valuation methodologies, assumptions, and consistency across similar cases.
• Conflict-of-interest disclosures for all professionals involved in resolution processes.

2.1.3.4. Recognition of Financial Abuse and Protection of DHFL Victims
Explicitly recognize the DHFL case and similar insolvency outcomes as financial abuse constituting a violation of human rights under international law, including:

• UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), Principles 11–17 (state duty to protect against business-related human-rights abuses) and Principle 19 (ensuring access to remedy).
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) obligations regarding the right to property, social security, and protection from arbitrary deprivation.

2.1.3.5. Victim-Centric Remedies
Implement immediate, enforceable measures to protect small depositors and other affected stakeholders:

• Create a dedicated Financial Abuse Redressal Mechanism under RBI/IBBI supervision, with fast-track procedures for claims arising from corporate mismanagement, fraudulent restructuring, or CoC malfeasance.
• Guarantee restitution or provisional recovery for small depositors pending the final resolution of insolvency proceedings.
• Establish binding corporate accountability frameworks ensuring directors, CoC members, and resolution professionals are held civilly and criminally liable for breaches of fiduciary duty or collusion resulting in depositor losses.

2.1.3.6. International Monitoring and Technical Support
Invite international human-rights organizations, including OHCHR, GANHRI, and EITI/OGP partners, to:

• Monitor DHFL and similar cases as precedents of financial abuse.
• Provide technical guidance for implementing transparent, accountable, and equitable insolvency frameworks.
• Ensure systemic reforms align with global human-rights norms and protect vulnerable depositors from recurrence.

2.1.4. Electoral and Media Safeguards

• Strengthen campaign-finance transparency; remediate statutory gaps left by prior mechanisms (e.g., Electoral Bonds) with open registers and mandatory donor disclosure.
• Commission independent audits of electoral rolls with repeatable, verifiable audit trails.
• Protect journalists, whistleblowers, and civil-society monitors via anti-SLAPP legislation and safe-reporting protocols.

2.1.5. International Monitoring and Technical Support

• Request GANHRI, OHCHR, and international civil-society coalitions to publicly monitor NHRC reform commitments and provide technical assistance aligned with the Paris Principles.
• Encourage international organizations (including EITI and OGP members) to prioritize transparency audits of financial and extractive-sector regulatory processes affecting public interest.
• Allocate funds and technical expertise to strengthen RTI implementation, protect activists, and train oversight bodies in open-data practices.

Targeted Intervention Mechanisms:

• GANHRI special review mechanism: invoke for ongoing NHRC monitoring.
• Joint monitoring reports by OHCHR, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch for annual civic space assessments.
• Global civil-society working group on India’s transparency environment, coordinated by Transparency International and Freedom House.
• UN Special Rapporteur visits (Freedom of Expression; Judges and Lawyers; Privacy; Human Rights Defenders) to investigate surveillance, judicial independence, and activist safety.

2.1.6. Final Appeal

We respectfully urge your organizations to:

• Publicly monitor and report on NHRC reform progress and the status of India’s RTI regime.
• Provide targeted technical assistance—including legal, procedural, and forensic auditing support—to public institutions committed to reform.
• Stand publicly with transparency activists, journalists, and dispossessed DHFL victims whose safety and access to remedy are jeopardized.
• Advocate for transparent insolvency and regulatory processes that protect small depositors, minority stakeholders, and public-interest claimants.

The democratic and human-rights stakes are immediate and material. International scrutiny, technical collaboration, and public accountability mechanisms will be essential to defend rights and restore institutional integrity.

CONCLUSION

Between 2014 and 2025, India’s transparency and human-rights ecosystem has undergone a marked retrenchment. The cumulative effects of diminished RTI efficacy, a weakened NHRC, opaque electoral funding, unchecked surveillance, shrinking press freedom, suppression of public dissent, growing cronyism, financial abuse due to manufactured bankruptcies and regulatory non-transparency collectively threaten constitutionalism and erode civic trust. If left unaddressed, these trends will further constrict avenues for redress and accountability, deepening systemic inequalities and undermining the foundations of democratic governance.

Yours Most Sincerely,

Whistleblowers, Dissenters, Citizens

On Behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA)

Appendix — Selected Investigative Pieces

(The above references were provided by petitioners and are offered as starting points for investigative follow-up. We encourage your offices to consult additional independent and official records in pursuing verification and remedial recommendations.)

Appendix II — A Brief Timeline

2014 – BJP assumes power, pledging transparency and good governance. Early years see rising allegations of cronyism, opaque project allocations, and preferential industrial deals.

2015–2016 – Aadhaar mandated for welfare and financial access, raising concerns over exclusion, privacy, and digital surveillance. Early regulatory reforms centralize control over oversight institutions.

2018 – Electoral Bonds introduced, enabling anonymous corporate donations, undermining electoral finance transparency. Media consolidation increases; investigative journalism faces economic and political pressures.

2019 – RTI Act amendments centralize executive control over Information Commissioners, weakening independence. CAA protests met with suppression; dissenters charged under UAPA. Internet shutdowns occur in multiple regions during protests.

2020 – FCRA amendments restrict NGO operations; Amnesty International halts activities. EIA 2020 dilutes public hearings for environmental clearances. COVID-19 pandemic exposes gaps in public health data transparency and social welfare reporting.

2021 – Pegasus spyware revelations expose targeted surveillance of journalists, activists, and politicians. Farmers’ protests met with sedition charges and heavy policing. Judicial delays and sealed-cover proceedings undermine accountability.

2021-22 – DHFL resolution excludes small depositors followed by systemic RTI denials. IL&FS, PMC Bank, and other financial irregularities highlight broader corporate governance opacity. Mass privatizations occur with minimal disclosure (e.g., Air India).

2023 – GANHRI defers NHRC accreditation citing governance concerns. DPDP Act passed with state exemptions, weakening privacy safeguards. CoWIN data leaks raise concerns on digital security. Allegations of voter-roll manipulation emerge.

2024 – Supreme Court invalidates Electoral Bonds, but voter roll and EVM audit controversies persist. Press freedom constrained; anti-civil-society measures continue. GANHRI again defers NHRC accreditation.

2025 – GANHRI recommends NHRC downgrade to B-status. DPDP Rules notified amid criticisms of inadequate safeguards. Mass voter deletions trigger “vote theft” probes. Environmental clearances continue without meaningful public consultation; indigenous and forest-dependent communities face displacement.

Structural Trends Highlighted:

• Institutional erosion: NHRC, RTI, judiciary autonomy, investigative media, civil-society space.
• Digital and bureaucratic exclusion: Aadhaar-linked welfare, CoWIN, DPDP implementation gaps, surveillance.
• Economic opacity and governance risk: DHFL, IL&FS, PMC Bank, privatizations, CoC decisions.
• Electoral integrity threats: Anonymous funding, EVM audits, voter-roll manipulation, limited transparency.
• Environmental and social governance failures: EIA 2020, large infrastructure projects, climate vulnerability, displacement of minorities and indigenous groups.
• Systemic targeting of dissent: UAPA, SLAPP litigation, Pegasus, police action, internet shutdowns.

Analysis:
This timeline frames the decline in transparency, accountability, and human-rights protections as structured, cumulative, and systemic, rather than isolated incidents. The convergence of legal, digital, financial, and environmental governance failures demonstrates deliberate retrenchment affecting economic, social, and civil rights, disproportionately harming vulnerable groups and undermining democratic trust.

References

A Victimized Family of DHFL FD Holders, on behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia. (2025, January 11). Calling the NHRC to break the silence on DHFL victims: An open letter to Justice Ramasubramanian. Once in a Blue Moon Academia. https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2025/01/11/calling-the-nhrc-to-break-the-silence-on-dhfl-victims-an-open-letter-to-justice-ramasubramanian/

Amnesty International. (2021, July 18). The Pegasus Project: Massive data leak reveals Israeli NSO Group’s spyware used to target activists, journalists, and political leaders globally [Press release]. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-pegasus-project/

Amnesty International. (2022, January 28). India should stop using abusive foreign funding law [Press release]. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2022/01/india-should-stop-using-abusive-foreign-funding-law/

Amnesty International. (2023, December 28). India: Damning new forensic investigation reveals repeated use of Pegasus spyware to target high-profile journalists. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/india-damning-new-forensic-investigation-reveals-repeated-use-of-pegasus-spyware-to-target-high-profile-journalists/

Amnesty International. (2024, December 2). India: GANHRI must review the national accreditation status of the National Human Rights Commission of India: Joint letter. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa20/8796/2024/en/

Association for Democratic Reforms. (2024). Democratizing elections: The Supreme Court of India’s landmark verdict on Electoral Bonds. https://adrindia.org/content/democratizing-elections-supreme-court-india%25E2%2580%2599s-landmark-verdict-electoral-bonds

Bandyopadhyay, D. (2022, October 25). Financial abuse of the DHFL victims: A complaint to the NHRC. Once in a Blue Moon Academia. https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2022/10/25/financial-abuse-of-the-dhfl-victims-a-complaint-to-the-nhrc/

BBC News. (2021, March 3). India is now only ‘partly free’ under Modi, says report. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56249596

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